


The Archer

by winterswept



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Conflict, F/M, Post-ROTG, Self-Doubt, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-01-04 04:48:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21191825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterswept/pseuds/winterswept
Summary: “Are you out of your mind, dropping your weapon?” Numair's voice leapt to a shout. “You could have gotten us all killed!”“Did I?” Daine asked innocently. “Did I get us all killed?”





	1. Chapter 1

The pair of stormwings stretched their wings wide, steel feathers catching the light like switchblades. A few feet away, a trio of spidrens reared.

Across the clearing Daine the Wildmage pulled her bowstring back to her ear, an arrow notched at the ready. She felt the air in the forest tighten unpleasantly around her as to her side the sorcerer Numair Salmalín called on his Gift. Black light outlined with ivory radiated out from his body.

A quintet of green Rider recruits looked on in alarm from behind the couple. Each Rider carried a dagger, bow, or sword in their horse-pack per the Horsemistress’s guidelines, but none had yet been trained in their use—besides that they’d left their packs with their horses, who were grazing a field’s distance back. Ben and Arin, the Gifted twins from the coast, lit small fires in their hands and held them unsophisticatedly between their palms as if ready to throw sparks across the clearing. The other Riders—farm kids, the lot of them—stood struck dumb at the sight of their assailants. Their muscles tensed, their hands empty.

The large spidren hissed, and the black robe mage’s gift pulsed in unconscious response. A shiver went down Arin’s back.

  
* * *   
  


The Rider trainees’ annual trip was designed to be risk-free. Each year, once Buri determined that the newest class of Rider recruits had gotten their bearings riding horseback, the class was split into small groups and paired with a seasoned Rider, knight, or mage. Buri, Onua, and Sarge each took their own mini-companies yearly, and Daine, Numair, Raoul, and a handful of friendly knights pitched in when time allowed. The mini-companies would spend a few weeks riding in a secure loop around the capital city, practicing their horsemanship. The outings were intended to afford trainees their “sea legs” for a life of riding and camping. Unlike the long Rider trip which would occur later in the season, these excursions were deliberately made on sheltered terf, the object being as much to encourage company bonding as to practice basic survival skills. The recruits and their leaders were not to seek out or attract trouble of any kind.

Daine and Numair, as usual, had ignored that memo.

This season the new Rider class was larger than any in a decade, and Buri and Queen Thayet had called in all their favors. Kel ran a unit for the first time, and Alanna stepped in to take a group as well. Buri had requested that Numair and Daine separate and each helm their own units, but the pair had stubbornly refused to be split up.

The early Riders’ trip was never Daine’s favorite. It was a bit basic, always run-of-the-mill, accompanied by the least shaped-up Rider younglings and without access to her favorite Rider friends. If she was to spend a month with Numair, she’d far rather spend it together at their tower, or on the road by themselves where they could speak (and touch) freely. If they were to spend time with the Rider chaff, pre-pruning, she wouldn’t mind so long as there was some outlet for coaching the trainees, or for some varied days and nights. But the loop-trip had been built for dullness, a rudimentary ride-and-repeat. One without access to hot food or sturdy beds, and cut off from all news from the capital. She missed her quiet home, the chatter of the dragonet, the comforting feeling of sliding into a warm bed with her love after a long day wrapped in the world of her magic. A bedroll together on hard ground, a horse-length away from five fifteen-year-olds, wasn’t the same.

She never appreciated the home they’d carved out for themselves, a step withdrawn from the rest of the world, until she left it.

  
* * *   
  


After a month in the field, tired from long days of riding, camping, and enduring the taste of freeze-dried meal packs, the mages’ group had finally returned within a stone’s throw of Corus. They were a half-day’s ride from home when Daine had sensed an unlikely coupling of immortals nearby, her breath catching as she realized that the group was mixed-species. In the years since the Immortals War ended, stormwings and other immortal species had been more than content to retreat into their own affairs. A group of intelligent immortals such as stormwings parleying with spidrens this close to Corus begged the question. Daine brought Cloud to a halt just as the Riders’ group came in sight of the Great Road to the castle barracks.

“There’s a stormwing and a few spidrens gathered together a few miles north,” she reported, looking up at Numair. The recruits slowed and congregated around them.

“Gathered?” The mage closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You mean to say they’re fraternizing, not just located in proximity to one another?” 

“They’re definitely together. For what, I don’t know.” She took a deep breath in, displeasure leaking off of her in a wave. She struggled not to whine. “We were almost home. It’s been weeks since I had a hot bath. I’ve been looking forward to it.”

“Me too.” He cast an eye over her.

Daine cocked an eyebrow at him, a smile tugging at her lips, but he was already nudging Spots around to the north and directing their charges to do the same. He looked back at Daine, who nodded. He raised his voice and addressed the would-be Riders.

“All right, troop, you heard that. Daine says there’s an odd grouping of immortals an hour’s ride up north. As you know: Mages employed by the realm of Tortall are under official orders to investigate any situations with immortals that might be suspect, at any moment’s notice, such as to benefit the crown.”

_A decree which’s come to mean that Mair and I alone, somehow, are needed to investigate every immortal doing from here to Persopolis_. Daine spoke silently to Cloud.

Numair continued. “And I’ll be damned if we ride another day towards home only to be sent a day’s ride back here before I have the opportunity to lie down in my actual honest-to-god bed and eat a decent meal that hasn’t been pre-packaged and tied to the side of a horse for a week. So,” he held out his arm, ushering the little company forward. Daine and Cloud took the lead. The group moved out, turning away from the road and back into the wilderness, their intentions set.

  
* * *   
  


Half an hour later they halted again to discuss their next move, dismounting and giving their horses a bit of free rein to graze. Daine opened her magical “ears” to listen and quickly realized that the stormwings had been putting out magical feelers of their own, tracking the wildmage and her party as they’d moved. Numair had just settled down to draw out a map in the dirt when he jumped to his feet. In a moment, spidrens burst into the clearing and stormwings wheeled down from on high. Instinctively, Daine and Numair moved together to herd the untrained recruits behind them. Daine raised her bow; Numair raised his hands.

The lead stormwing let out a loud, echoing caw, a sound not unlike Onua’s pre-battle warcry. His wings were outstretched, taunting.

Daine felt Numair tensing beside her. Felt the oxygen evaporating around her as his fear pulled it into his Gift, into menacing, vainglorious light that in turn fueled the spidrens’ fear and fury. Their front legs rearing, his light pulsing, her arrow notched and bowstring taut, their teeth flashing. Reflexive, semi-conscious bluffs.

Daine observed this cycle—and her own part in it—and felt an irritable helplessness creeping up her throat. They were supposed to be _home_ by now, not caught in this absurd situation in this godsforsaken forest. The other Rider groups would be back at the barracks already, and she should have seen this coming, and everyone around her was riling themselves _up_ instead of down. Numair the scholar stood beside her, supposedly practical and wise, and across from them a group of centuries-old, semi-divine beings, and all parties were standing in a circle puffing themselves up like overconfident pages. She felt as if a string in her head was stretching thinner and thinner with every feral growl that escaped their enemies’ mouths, with every inch of breathable air Numair sucked out of the forest around her. It was ridiculous, all of it. When the large spidren cawed again, she felt her patience _snap._

“We could play out this game,” Daine called, lowering her weapon. “But I’d much rather settle this without violence. We come as allies, if you’ll take us.”

With that, she loosened her arrow and tossed her bow neatly into the center of the clearing.

  
* * *   
  


The spidren reared—a dead squirrel leaked blood on the ground to its right, Numair noticed, briefly—and Daine threw her bow out of her reach. Empty hands fell to her sides as she waited for their response, unarmed. Numair glanced at her, one eye steady on their assailants, mind flecked with fear, anxiety and power rippling off him in waves. A beat passed, but he had no choice. He looked to his mate and followed her lead, dulling his fire. They faced the immortals, naked to what attacks might come.

Oxygen rushed back into the air as Daine continued, her tone placid. “Would you mind telling us why you’re here?”

  
* * *   
  


The immortals, as it turned out, had not been consorting for any reason other than to review where stormwing and spidren clans drew territory borders west of Lake Naxen. A stormwing chick had crossed the line a week before, and the local immortals’ relationship had soured. The clan heads were meeting in the aftermath to establish firm borders between their lands, when, as they described it, an aggressive group of two-leggers, with unbridled sorcerer’s fire and packs full of daggers, came barging in. Once provided the chance to explain the situation, it became, after all, an uneventful meeting between immortals and mortals.

Daine, Numair, and their group were about ten minutes down the path when Numair deemed it a safe enough distance from their potential adversaries to allow a break in their rank. He whirled his mount around to face the wildmage.

“Are you out of your mind, dropping your weapon?” His voice leapt to a shout. “You could have gotten us all killed!”

“Did I?” she asked innocently. “Did I get us all killed?”

“You know very well you could have done,” he retorted. “That was _not_ a scenario in which you should have been unarmed. You had _no _indication as to their motives, _no_ intelligence about their ties to hostile groups—"

“I felt their bearings through my magic. They didn’t feel like they wanted a fight. I didn’t much want one either.”

“They didn’t _feel_…!”

“Males of any species make a big stink about their strength if you give them a reason to. Stormwings are supposedly as smart as two-leggers, and this one was flaunting his steel the same way a rooster would flash his feathers to scare off rival males in a cockfight. They needed someone to talk sense with them, not feed into it.”<strike></strike>

“And, you lost your patience.”

“Well, and that.”

“Which you happen to have a reputation for doing—”

A snicker escaped behind them, and Numair whipped around to face the source, Arin. “And _you_ can leave right alone with this. Never _ever_ call up uncontrolled fire magic this near a forest—are you mad? No matter how fit you think it’ll make you look to Cara.” He jerked his head to indicate the female Rider steering the gelding, who blushed. “You do not call up battle magic before you’ve been taught, unless absolutely necessary. And none of you—” He turned to face the group of trainees at large. “—are to take guidance from this experience, either. Never drop your weapon when there’s a fight at bay. Never give up your advantage before you know the situation at hand, unless you’re a senseless, unreasonable, exasperating girl—” He turned to face Daine again. “—trying to kill me, continually finding new ways to ignore all fundamental rules of sense and strike out on dangerous, unnecessary—”

Daine spoke sedately. “That was the simplest way to handle that situation, Numair. We all needed to calm down a bit. You could use a bit of calm now, in fact.”

“What we needed was to handle the situation without leaving ourselves defenseless, magelet!”

She held up the fingers of her left hand, where a band sparkled in the daylight. “I have defensive charms, remember? Not to mention a companion who would likely try out some senseless, unreasonable, exasperating magic to get me out of harm’s way.”

“So you would weaken yourself, knowing that it would distract me and needlessly put our charges in danger—”

“No, no that’s not what I’m—you know I wouldn’t have thrown the bow unless I knew it would work.”

“But you _can’t_ know, darling, and the problem with assuming you do—”

“I wasn’t assuming, but if you would just—”

The tones of their argument wavered often enough that Arin found it difficult to keep abreast. One moment Numair seemed furious, the next resigned, the next, he was calling Daine “sweet” and needling her about a skirmish she’d started heedlessly in the past, and she was laughing, and admitting fault, but only if _he_ would admit to wrongdoing somewhere along the line as well. He started to reprimand her again; she leaned down to loudly ask Cloud if she would bite him for her. Numair lurched exaggeratedly away before Daine finished the sentence, his expression sitting somewhere between amusement and aggravation. Eventually he sighed, and kissed the top of her head, and they let it be.

  
* * *   
  


They rode on back toward the road, a silence settling over the group. Daine led them to a watering hole for the horses, and for the first time on their trip they had a period of rest where the Riders weren’t laughing, gossiping, or bickering with one another. The group sat in silence, drained from the excursion, from the fight, from the weeks on the trail. After a bit of rest they mounted the horses again and rode on.

When they were a mile out from the city, Daine mentioned she might fly back to give their handlers at the castle an early brief about their unexpected encounter. Numair nodded curtly, and she began loosening the ties at the top of her chest. She sat up straight, and in an instant her shirt was empty and falling to her seat, a small black bird rising from the collar. Numair caught the empty fabric before it slid off the saddle, eyes never moving from the bird as it flew toward the horizon. He folded the cloth carefully, gaze lingering on that point off in distance.


	2. Chapter 2

The remainder of the group arrived at the castle shortly after dusk. Numair left the young Riders at the barracks and checked in with a page before climbing the stairs to the room he shared with Daine.

To his surprise, it was empty when he stepped in. An alarm rang in his mind for a moment—had something happened to her on her way back?—and he sent out a strand of magic to find her. His body relaxed when he felt her presence in the dining hall below. She wrapped a copper tendril lightly around his searching thread of power in acknowledgement, and he opened his eyes. If she was fine, then he was ready for that bath. Grateful to see that someone had already fetched the water, he pulled off his clothing and slipped in, groaning as hot water touched his body for the first time in weeks. He stretched his arms out on each edge of the tub and leaned back, resting at last.

When he opened his eyes next, Daine was sitting on the floor next to him, a meager dinner plate in her hands. “They weren’t serving any more, but I managed to snag a bit for us.” She held the porcelain out in offering.

“Thank you, love. I’m not hungry, but maybe later.”

She reached to lay a hand on his, her head leaning on the ceramic of the tub. “I’m sorry, Numair.” They sat together a moment before she spoke again. “May I?”

He nodded, watching her carefully as she stood and began to undress. When she was fully nude, she stepped into the basin to sit with her back against her lover, her body snug against his, head resting under his chin. He wrapped his arms around her stomach and pressed his lips to the hair behind her ear.

“I’m sorry, Numair,” she said again. She rubbed his forearm softly. “I didn’t mean to spook you. I was just doing what I thought best.”

He gave her a squeeze, speaking softly so that his words might not carry as much hurt. “I’m not certain you thought at all, magelet. You do what feels right to you, without thought.”

“What feels right.” She leaned back to brush a kiss along his chin, feeling him shiver in response, feeling the lights turn on all over her body in each place they touched. “I do. But situations like that require instinct rather than thought. I don’t know how to act otherwise, but I hate seeing it pain you when I act that quick.” Numair buried his nose in her hair. “I love you,” she whispered after a moment.

“And I you.” He whispered back. “You’ve caught me, magelet.”

For a few minutes they sat, content in each others’ company, before he moved to rise from the tub. She hastened to follow suit. He stood, glistening in the low light, naked as he came, and reached a hand to her.

She caught it and followed him to the bed.

  
* * *   
  


It was slow; it was good.

She couldn’t understand how he could be this tender to her on days when she didn’t deserve it. How even tonight his hands would be gentle as he settled his body above her hips, soft as he reached down between her thighs. He whispered in her ear, “this all right?” and she nodded against him, because of course it was all right, even if it didn’t make sense.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Who could ever leave me darling? But who could stay?_

She woke in bed the next morning, Numair’s face a few inches from hers. She ran a hand down his cheek and watched the sleep fall from him.

“Good morning, my love.” He opened his eyes to take her in. It was their first time in weeks waking up together in a real bed, in their own room. They lay together a minute, silent. Just watching one another. Then Daine reached to trace a scar on the right side of his chest, just for a reason to touch him, and felt that familiar catch in her stomach again. Numair caught her eyes, his own black and deep, and leaned in to kiss her deeply.

He wrapped his fingers in her hair as both their breath began coming heavy—“G’morning, magelet”—and then lowered his head to plant kisses down the length of her bare torso. Daine arched into his lips instinctively, mind clouded with the hazy pleasantness of the action, with the familiarity of his touch, her body’s fluent reaction to it, their mutual fluency itself a form of love, a ritual approaching something like worship. When Numair reached the space between her legs and settled there, at her pelvis and then lower, mouth moving somewhere deeper, and the shape of her pleasure changed from soft waves to stronger, irresistible jolts, Daine jerked away suddenly.

It took her a moment to fully recover her breath to ask the question. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why am I kissing you?” he asked, puzzled. He straightened up to match her, hands still resting on her thighs.

“Why are you touching me like this after what I did yesterday.”

“Why would what happened yesterday mean I wouldn’t touch you today?”

“You should be angry with me.”

“I can touch you when I’m angry.” He ran a finger down the length of her again, as if to prove it. “And I’m not sure anger is the most precise term for this. It would be foolish for me to be angered at something I expect.”

“You—you’re splitting hairs, Numair. It doesn’t matter angry, upset, whatever you are. I acted without thought to you; You shouldn’t think I deserve—” she gestured helplessly, “_this_ today.”

“You don’t deserve . . . pleasure?”

“You shouldn’t _want_ to . . . please me today."

“But I like . . . this is my pleasure, literally, Daine. But if you don’t want me to—”

“I do want—” Her body ached for the pressure removed when she'd pulled back. “I so want—but—”

A tired edge entered his voice. “Then just tell me what you want from me and I’ll do it.”

“That’s the problem!” She brought herself fully upright now, face-to-face with him as he sat upright between her legs. “I broke something yesterday, broke it _again_, and you’re treating me like I haven’t.”

“I’m treating you like someone I love. You think because you scared me earlier we’d—what? We’d stop all this? Or are you saying that our coupling should be transactional?”

“No, I didn’t—that’s not . . .” She felt tears springing to her eyes, of embarrassment or frustration or something else she couldn’t tell. Mithros. She’d given him a fright, ruined his day yesterday, ruined the mood today, and now _he_ was going to end up comforting _her_. She took a deep breath and tried again.

“I just hate that I keep doing this to you. I always do—what the court-hands would call “pulling a stunt.” And I think I’m right when I do it, and but then I see your face and I see how it hurts you. . . ”

Numair sighed. “Darling, I do hate when you pull tricks like that. But I wouldn’t have you otherwise.” He shifted, lying beside her again now, and ran a finger over her cheek. “You scare me sometimes—more than scare me—but it’s not all injurious. All the things I love about you are the same as these things I—Daine, I love you.”

“But we never leave this sticking point. If we’re—” she brought her hand between them to rest on his sternum. The silver band on her finger pulsed with his magic. A promise, he’d said. “I don’t know how to move past this.”

“I don’t know we'll ever move past this. But I don’t know that we need to. Plenty of partnerships have this point.” He smiled and quoted an old Tyran adage. “If you want to spend a queen coin, you have to hold the spiked edge.”

“I don’t want to be a spiked edge for you.”

“I’m sure I’m one for you, sometimes, too.” She frowned, her brow furrowing as she turned that over. He sighed again. “Must I remind you of all the shit I do?”

“There’s nothing like this that you do.” She paused, trying for levity. “You’re hopelessly vain, maybe. But a face like that, who wouldn’t be?” She started to curl a circle of his chest hair around her finger when Numair caught her wrist. He frowned, serious.

“Daine, I shout at you when I’m scared. I retreat into myself. I’m distant when you need me.”

Daine scowled. “That’s not right. You can be distant, but only when you’re hurting. And you’re here when I need you.”

“I’m overprotective of you.”

“And I jump off cliffs just to goad you.”

“And we each know it, and love each other through it.” He paused. “I think that’s all we can do. I love the girl I love, with all her wild faults.” He reached an arm down around her lower back, pulling her closer. “And I want to fuck you the way we both like it regardless of them, if you’ll have me. Without any of this ‘deserving’ nonsense.”

Daine took a breath. “Ok.” She blinked to loosen the tears in her eyes, and giggled. “And how’s the mood for that now?”

He smiled and ran a finger lovingly through one of her curls. “A bit odd, just the way I like it with you. Magelet, may I?” She nodded, and his mouth was on hers, this time demanding, then holding back a fraction to see if she’d follow suit. She smiled beneath his lips, and answered his wanting in kind. She raked a nail gently down his chest—she knew what that did to him—and felt him stifle a buck in response, and smiled. She knew him; she loved him. He knew her; he loved her. They’d be all right. She pulled him closer, rolling them so that she was on top, and lost herself in his arms once more.


End file.
